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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Justin’s going to be one busy little Bieber on February 9.
“Baby” singer Justin Bieber will do double duty on “Saturday Night Live” for its February 9 episode, serving as both host and musical guest, NBC said Wednesday.
Bieber, who’s currently thrilling tweeners everywhere on his Believe World Tour, has appeared on the late-night show in the past, appearing in a skit opposite “SNL” alum Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character in a February 2011 episode.
“SNL” returns from hiatus on January 19, with “The Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence hosting and the Lumineers serving as musical guest.
Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON — Prosecutors in Missouri, supported by the federal government, came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday with a big request: They wanted the justices to rule that the police do not need warrants to obtain blood samples in drunken-driving investigations.
There seemed little enthusiasm among the justices for that categorical approach. Instead, the argument turned into a search for a middle ground that would take account of the practical realities of roadside stops, body chemistry and the administration of justice in the digital age.
On the one hand, the natural dissipation of blood alcohol means that time is of the essence when people suspected of drunken driving are pulled over and refuse to consent to a breath test. Obtaining a warrant, moreover, takes time.
On the other hand, several justices expressed discomfort with what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. called the “pretty scary image” of government-sanctioned bodily intrusions involving sharp needles.
The case arose from the arrest of Tyler G. McNeely, who was pulled over for speeding on a Missouri highway and exhibited, the State Supreme Court said, “the telltale signs of intoxication — bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and the smell of alcohol on his breath.” He performed poorly on a field sobriety test and was arrested.
Mr. McNeely refused to take a breath test or, after being taken to a hospital, to consent to a blood test. One was performed anyway, about 25 minutes after he was pulled over, and it showed a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent, almost twice the legal limit.
The state court suppressed the evidence, saying there had been no “exigent circumstances” that excused the failure to obtain a warrant. “Warrantless intrusions of the body are not to be undertaken lightly,” the court said in an unsigned opinion.
In 1966, in Schmerber v. California, the United States Supreme Court said no warrant was required to take blood without the driver’s consent after an accident in which the driver and a passenger were injured. The fact that alcohol levels diminish over time figured in the court’s analysis, as did the time it took to investigate the scene of the accident and move the injured people to the hospital.
The question in the case heard Wednesday, Missouri v. McNeely, No. 11-1425, was whether the dissipation of blood alcohol by itself justifies taking blood without a warrant when there are no additional factors complicating matters.
Much of the argument concerned how long obtaining a warrant actually takes these days and whether the Supreme Court should encourage streamlined procedures. In some places, the justices were told, warrants can be obtained by phone in as little as 15 or 20 minutes; in others, the process can take two hours or longer.
Nicole A. Saharsky, a lawyer for the federal government, said the day might come when warrants could be obtained so quickly that courts should perhaps require them. “If the world changed,” she told the justices, “so that every police officer had an iPad and that judges were always on duty and that the warrants could be gotten that quickly, you would consider that.” But she said that was not the reality in most of the country today.
That concession, Justice Antonin Scalia said, supported a case-by-case approach. “If it would have taken too long, then it’s O.K. without a warrant,” he said. “If it wouldn’t have taken that long, it’s bad.”
Later, though, Justice Scalia asked Steven R. Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. McNeely, whether warrants played an important role in stopping unreasonable searches if they were quickly and routinely available.
Mr. Shapiro responded that “the privacy safeguards of the Fourth Amendment benefit by having a neutral and detached magistrate review the evidence before the state does something as intrusive as putting a needle in somebody’s arm.”
The justices also explored other ways of obtaining the required evidence.
“Breathalyzers in my mind have a much different intrusion level,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. “They don’t intrude into your body.”
But John N. Koester Jr., a lawyer for Missouri, explained that “it’s very difficult for practical reasons to force someone to blow into the Breathalyzer.”
“You have to take a very deep breath,” he said. “And one police officer told me it’s sort of like you can put a balloon in front of somebody’s mouth, but you can’t make him blow it up.”
Justice Scalia later proposed a second idea: that drivers “in a paddy wagon and on the way to the hospital” could be told a warrant had been requested and that, one way or the other, blood would be drawn unless they agreed to a breath test.
Ms. Saharsky said such drivers might nonetheless “take their chances that the evidence is going to dissipate.”
Justice Elena Kagan said it was also possible that the drivers would not make rational calculations.
“Maybe they’re drunk,” she said.
WASHINGTON — With his choice of Jacob J. Lew to be the secretary of Treasury, President Obama on Thursday will complete the transformation of his economic team from the big-name economists and financial firefighters hired four years ago to budget negotiators ready for the next fiscal fights in Congress.
If confirmed by the Senate, the 57-year-old Mr. Lew — Mr. Obama’s current chief of staff and former budget director — would become the president’s second Treasury secretary, succeeding Timothy F. Geithner, who was the last remaining principal from the original economic team that took office at the height of the global crisis in January 2009.
While the team is changing, so far it is made up entirely of men who have been part of the administration since its first months. Gene B. Sperling, like Mr. Lew a veteran of the Clinton administration, is expected to remain as director of the White House National Economic Council. Alan B. Krueger, a former Treasury economist, continues as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and Jeffrey D. Zients, a former business executive, as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.
That composition gives Mr. Obama a high degree of comfort with his economic advisers, who have experience in the budget struggles that have occupied the administration since Republicans took control of the House two years ago. Those struggles will resume later this month. Yet the continuity also plays into criticism that the president is too insular and insufficiently open to outside voices and fresh eyes in the White House.
Adding to a scarcity of female advisers among Mr. Obama’s top aides, Hilda L. Solis, the secretary of labor for four years, announced on Wednesday that she would be resigning, following the most prominent female Cabinet member, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, out of the administration.
Separately, administration officials let it be known on Wednesday that several Cabinet members will remain in their jobs: Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, who is expected to stay through the full adoption of the 2010 health care law in 2014; Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general; and Eric K. Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs.
If Mr. Lew is confirmed in time, his first test as Treasury secretary could come as soon as next month, when the administration and Congressional Republicans are expected to face off over increasing the nation’s debt ceiling, which is the legal limit on the amount that the government can borrow. Mr. Obama has said he will not negotiate over raising that limit, which was often lifted routinely in the past, but Republican leaders have said they will refuse to support an increase unless he agrees to an equal amount of spending cuts, particularly to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Mr. Lew was passed over for Mr. Obama’s economic team four years ago, when Mr. Obama instead chose Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard University president and Treasury secretary, as director of the National Economic Council. Mrs. Clinton then hired Mr. Lew at the State Department, and in late 2010 — over the objections of Mrs. Clinton, who had come to rely on Mr. Lew — Mr. Obama made him budget director, the same post Mr. Lew had held late in the Clinton administration.
Mr. Lew in the 1980s was a Democratic adviser to the House speaker then, Thomas P. O’Neill, participating in fiscal talks with the Reagan administration. Mr. Lew is known for his low-key style and organizational skills.
While Mr. Lew has much less experience than Mr. Geithner in international economics and financial markets, he would come to the job with far more expertise in fiscal policy than Mr. Geithner did. That shift in skills reflects the changed times, when emphasis has shifted from a global financial crisis to the budget fights with Republicans in Congress.
The partisan tension suggests that Mr. Lew will be questioned closely by Senate Republicans in confirmation hearings.
But, Republicans have not signaled the kind of opposition they put up to some of Mr. Obama’s other potential nominations.
Mr. Lew’s departure as chief of staff would create a vacancy for what would be Mr. Obama’s fifth White House chief of staff, a turnover rate that is in contrast with the stability atop Treasury the last four years with Mr. Geithner. The leading candidates are said to be Denis McDonough, currently the deputy national security adviser in the White House, and Ronald A. Klain, a former chief of staff to two vice presidents, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Al Gore.
Before joining the Obama administration, Mr. Lew spent a brief period in the financial sector, at Citigroup, first as managing director of Citi Global Wealth Management and then as chief operating officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments.
By contrast, Mr. Geithner had been president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which includes overseeing Wall Street. For the financial industry, Mr. Lew is a largely a blank slate.
“While he can undoubtedly learn the material on the job, we question whether he has sufficient relationships with the banking industry in the U.S. and abroad, which can be critical during a financial crisis,” Brian Gardner, head of Washington research for the investment banking firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, wrote to clients on Wednesday.
But Michael Schein, who worked with Mr. Lew at Citigroup and is now head of a nonprofit financial services organization, Accion, countered: “People in the business community like to deal with people in Washington who they can trust. I think Jack already does, and will do, very well with Wall Street and with business leaders because he is a very, very straight shooter.”
Mr. Lew has a reputation as a fiscal progressive who, like Mr. Obama, is eager to protect Medicaid and other antipoverty programs from deep cuts. But advocates for tighter financial regulation of Wall Street question whether he is too conservative.
The question is relevant because major regulations under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law remain to be put into effect in Mr. Obama’s second term.
“He appears to share a Wall Street mentality, particularly when it comes to financial reform,” said Dennis M. Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a Washington-based nonprofit. “Financial reform is all about making the banking system safer and preventing more taxpayer bailouts.”
OAKLAND — The nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary won a round in federal court this week, with a judge rejecting efforts by Harborside Health Center's landlords in Oakland and San Jose to immediately shut down operations.
The property owners have been under pressure since federal prosecutors last summer threatened to seize the buildings, arguing that pot sales were in violation of federal law. But in her ruling, Chief Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James said that "any argument about the urgency of stopping Harborside's activity rings hollow" — since the landlords had known for years that it was a medical cannabis dispensary.
Allowing Harborside to stay open while a fuller legal airing of the issues took place, James continued, would not cause the landlords irreparable harm.
In her ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, James also found that the property owners had no legal standing to seek an immediate end to sales at the dispensary by contending they violated the federal Controlled Substances Act.
Harborside — which serves more than 108,000 patients — now will have the opportunity to battle the federal civil forfeiture actions in court.
"We look forward to proving our case in front of a jury, and continue to believe we will prevail," Harborside's executive director, Steve DeAngelo, said in a statement.
The city of Oakland also has sued to prevent the property forfeiture, contending that federal prosecutors had missed a five-year statute of limitations and misled city officials with promises that they would not go after dispensaries complying with state and local laws.
In her ruling, James ordered Oakland's case be coordinated with the forfeiture cases.
Monday's ruling sets the stage for what could be a precedent-setting battle over clashing federal and state marijuana laws.
Cedric Chao, an attorney for Oakland, has argued that closure of the dispensaries would deprive the city of tax revenue and force Harborside's patients into the underground market, driving up crime.
"The city of Oakland could not be more pleased" by James' ruling, Chao said. "The patients can continue to get the medicine. They won't be thrown in the streets. There won't be an immediate public health crisis. There won't be a public safety crisis."
The U.S. attorney's office repeatedly has declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Prosecutors have filed a motion to toss Oakland's suit, contending the city has no legal standing to weigh in. That issue will be heard at a hearing on Jan. 31.
lee.romney@latimes.com
Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.
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GENEVA (Reuters) – Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, one of Europe’s most prestigious summer music festivals, is in a coma after a cross-country skiing accident during the holidays, festival organizers revealed on Monday.
The 76-year-old Swiss, who has lured some of the world’s greatest artists to Montreux – including Miles Davis, Ray Charles and Prince – was operated on in a Swiss hospital after his fall, it said.
“He has remained to date in a state of unconsciousness. His condition requires further additional tests,” the festival board said in a brief statement.
The accident occurred on Christmas Eve while skiing near his home in the village of Caux overlooking Montreux and Lake Geneva, festival secretary-general Mathieu Jaton told Reuters.
Nobs launched the festival in 1967 while working at the resort’s tourism office. He became known as “Funky Claude”, from a line in the song “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, about a fire which burned down Montreux casino during a Frank Zappa concert in 1971.
Despite heart surgery some six years ago, he remains festival director, a position he shared during the 1990s with American producer Quincy Jones who returns each year from Los Angeles to introduce new talent.
Nobs often joined musicians on stage, playing harmonica, sometimes accompanied by his dogs.
Sold-out highlights last July included concerts by Bob Dylan, American chanteuse Lana Del Rey and British actor and musician Hugh Laurie.
Jaton is assuming Nob’s responsibilities and will ensure smooth management of the 47th edition of the festival set for July 5-20, the statement said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Paul Casciato)
Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times
I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.
1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets
1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained
1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd
1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.
2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.
3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.
Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish
Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein
Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”
Alcoa said on Tuesday that its fourth-quarter earnings met Wall Street’s expectations and that it expected slightly higher demand for aluminum this year.
Net income was $242 million, or 21 cents a share, including one-time gains like income from selling a hydroelectric project.
Without those gains, the company would have made 6 cents a share on revenue of $5.9 billion, meeting analysts’ expectations, according to FactSet. Sales were higher than the $5.58 billion that analysts had predicted.
A year ago, the company posted a fourth-quarter loss of $193 million, or 18 cents a share, on revenue of $6 billion, and a loss after special items of 3 cents a share.
The weak global economy has hurt industrial demand for aluminum. But Alcoa expects demand to grow 7 percent in 2013, up from a 6 percent gain in 2012. It said the best prospects were in aerospace and forecast slower improvement in the auto, packaging, and building and construction markets.
The company said it had made record profits in its aluminum-rolling and product-making businesses while cutting costs in its mining and refining, or “upstream,” segments.
Alcoa’s chief executive, Klaus Kleinfeld, said the company had overcome volatile aluminum prices and global economic weakness and was in a “strong position to maximize profitable growth” in 2013.
Alcoa is the first company in the Dow Jones industrial average to report fourth-quarter earnings. Because it makes aluminum for many major industries, investors study its results for clues about the health and direction of the overall economy.
Stock in the company, which is based in New York, closed unchanged in regular trading at $9.10 a share. In late-session trading after the earnings report was released, the stock gained 12 cents to $9.22 a share.
In two of the biggest civil settlements since the financial crisis, the nation's biggest banks agreed Monday to cough up nearly $19 billion to resolve federal allegations of mortgage misdeeds.
Bankers saw the settlements as a major step in providing more certainty for their balance sheets and possibly foreshadowing an end to the era of billion-dollar mea culpas and open-ended regulatory probes.
In one case, 10 banks settled with regulators for $8.5 billion. In the second, Bank of America Corp. agreed to pay almost $10.4 billion to Fannie Mae, the giant loan buyer that the U.S. seized and propped up with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The deals come three years after prosecutors dropped criminal investigations against such subprime-mortgage kingpins as Countrywide Financial Corp.'s Angelo Mozilo in favor of pursuing civil fines.
"I'd have to say we're at least 75% of the way through with this process," said SNL Financial analyst Nancy Bush, arguing that it's time to concentrate on rebuilding the dysfunctional U.S. mortgage system. "The bankers are going to have to stop complaining about the government, and we'll have to stop this endless calling for someone to go to jail."
Housing advocates welcomed payouts for homeowners but asserted that the banks and bankers have gotten off easy, given the enormity of the economic damage to Main Street.
"When you think about $8.5 billion, and you know trillions of dollars in wealth have been lost by communities, it's not enough at all," said Sasha Werblin of the Greenlining Institute. "But some money is better than nothing."
The Bank of America settlement ends a bitter standoff between BofA, once the largest seller of home loans, and Fannie Mae, the nation's largest mortgage buyer.
The deal ends Fannie's demands that BofA buy back a mountain of soured loans issued by Countrywide, the high-risk Calabasas lender BofA acquired in 2008. BofA Chief Executive Brian Moynihan characterized the deal as "a significant step in resolving our remaining legacy mortgage issues."
BofA agreed to buy back $6.75 billion in residential mortgage loans sold to Fannie Mae and pay it an additional $3.6 billion in cash.
Moynihan had agreed previously to tens of billions of dollars in Countrywide-related claims. Those include shouldering the lion's share of last year's $25-billion settlement that five banks reached with the Obama administration and state attorneys general over so-called robo-signing of foreclosure paperwork and other abuses.
BofA still faces billions of dollars in claims from plaintiffs, including major insurers, the U.S. attorney's office in New York and the federal regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and fellow mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac.
But the bank has reached a tentative $8.5-billion settlement with holders of certain Countrywide mortgage bonds and another pending settlement for $2.4 million over its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., also in 2008.
Because Countrywide left Bank of America with so many mortgage-related headaches, many view BofA's tangles with regulators as a barometer for the whole mortgage industry, SNL's Bush said. And as bank stock prices recovered over the last year, BofA led the way with a 109% gain for 2012.
The $8.5-million settlement with 10 banks Monday represented an acknowledgment by bank regulators that a previous attempt to review millions of foreclosures for bank wrongdoing had failed. Instead, they took a streamlined approach — the lump sum — in getting relief for troubled borrowers. Four other banks opted out of the settlement.
The settlement replaces a failed process that started in April 2011. In that arrangement, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve required the 14 big providers of mortgage customer service to hire consultants to review foreclosures from 2009 or 2010, potentially affecting 4.4 million borrowers. Nearly half a million borrowers signed up for the free reviews, which were supposed to lead to compensation in cases of bank misconduct.
But the consultants' tab totaled $1.5 billion as last year ended — without a single penny of relief going to borrowers. So the regulators and 10 of the banks, including mortgage giants Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., agreed to a plan for more direct aid.
The 10 banks will pay $3.3 billion to 3.8 million borrowers, who could receive amounts ranging from a few hundred dollars to $125,000 depending on evidence of wrongdoing. Reviews continue at the four banks that opted out of the new approach.
In addition, the 10 banks agreed to provide $5.2 billion in foreclosure prevention assistance to borrowers at risk of losing homes, including mortgage modifications or forgiveness of judgments against them.
Comptroller Tom Curry, the nation's top bank regulator, said the switch was a "significant change in direction." But he said it met the original objectives "by ensuring that consumers are the ones who will benefit and that they will benefit more quickly and in a more direct manner."
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